THE RIGHT TO EAT RIGHT
2023Experience design, archiving
"The Rights to Eat Right" delves into the food cultures of Bedstuy, which are often overshadowed by the ongoing process of gentrification. Bedstuy's abusive relationship with segregation and racism forces its residents into hunger and compromise, weaponized to push out current abiding residents from their homes, ultimately serving as a sous-chef to inflating real estate in the story of gentrification. Saskia, a food aficionado, investigates the neighborhood as a means of adapting to new environments, as food is an integral part of her life and exploration of her surroundings. Her work highlights and explores the intersection of food and societies.
Despite the influx of organic supermarkets and growing restaurant industries, Bedstuy remains a food desert, as it is essentially unaffordable to most residents. The issues of the "food desert" in Bed-Stuy stem from segregation origins, a segregation practice rooted in capitalism and food consumerism. Food cultures have the ability to provide a snapshot of a neighborhood since food is a necessity that is often tied to cultures. The project aims to outline a handmade map based on a series of interviews, archived materials, and photographs, attempting to visualize the food apartheid in Bedstuy, a historically black neighborhood. The interviews were conducted in Herbert Von King, one of the only green spaces in the neighborhood.
Despite the influx of organic supermarkets and growing restaurant industries, Bedstuy remains a food desert, as it is essentially unaffordable to most residents. The issues of the "food desert" in Bed-Stuy stem from segregation origins, a segregation practice rooted in capitalism and food consumerism. Food cultures have the ability to provide a snapshot of a neighborhood since food is a necessity that is often tied to cultures. The project aims to outline a handmade map based on a series of interviews, archived materials, and photographs, attempting to visualize the food apartheid in Bedstuy, a historically black neighborhood. The interviews were conducted in Herbert Von King, one of the only green spaces in the neighborhood.
My project aims to investigate and archive the existence of food industries linked to food segregation in gentrifying neighborhoods. As an Asian immigrant from a middle-class family outside the United States, I am documenting my observations of the food cultures of Bedstuy and their relationship with segregation and food apartheid. Restaurants, bars, and grocery stores are linked to the wealth and whiteness of a neighborhood. In a neighborhood like Bedford Stuyvesant, we can observe the influx of organic supermarkets and pricey bars and restaurants in areas with more white residents than the original black residents. Using food cultures, we can also observe the movement of black residents from the west to the east of the neighborhood, where there are virtually no grocery stores within Stuyvesant Heights, while there are more grocery stores and restaurants towards Clinton Hill. Just like artists, the food industry is arguably responsible for attracting real estate and making an area more desirable, thus causing gentrification. But why are grocery stores being lumped together with restaurants and bars? Why are grocery stores avoiding black neighborhoods?
We start by defining Bedford Stuyvesant.
Bedford Stuyvesant is a historically black neighborhood within New York City's borough of Brooklyn. As of 2021, it is one of the most rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods in the United States. Bed-Stuy gained more than 30,000 white residents while 22,000 black residents left. This shift is especially noticeable when looking at a map of the neighborhood through its groceries and restaurants. Despite being a transportation desert, Bed-Stuy is rapidly growing in its food business, but where restaurants and organic groceries exist, white gentrifiers also exist. Disadvantaged neighborhoods are most often black and immigrant-owned. These places are unwanted and avoided by the real estate market, affecting prospects for grocery stores, restaurants, and bars to open. In neighboring Bushwick, also known as one of the poorest neighborhoods in the early 2000s, the neighborhood has become an area of flourishing artist communities and young professionals. In the 1980s, the neighborhood was incredibly undesirable. It was even nicknamed "The Well" for its dangerously high crime activities like murders, rapes, and robberies. Now, it's also known for its lively nightlife and restaurants. The median rent of Bushwick in 2007 was $795, and in 2022 it rose to $2700.
In Bedstuy, we are seeing a trend of black residents moving from the west of the neighborhood (neighboring Clinton Hill, a wealthy white neighborhood) towards the east, closer to Brownsville and East New York, which are currently areas of high poverty and crime, also predominantly black. Mentioned before, this shift of migration is noticeable through its existing restaurants and grocery stores because all of them tend to exist within the western side of the neighborhood, aka the whiter, more gentrified areas of Bed Stuy. The relationship with food apartheid and black neighborhoods isn't a new thing, and I'm using the term food apartheid as opposed to food desert because food industries choose not to open in neighborhoods like Bed-Stuy. There's no Trader Joe's (despite ironically being considered cheap), there's no Whole Foods, and there's no Gristedes: there are, however, a handful of Key Foods and other smaller delis, which most of the time sell produce that is noticeably turning bad, and the choices are also limited.
Dating back to the New Deal enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the aim to "restore prosperity to Americans" did not involve black Americans, banishing them to poor housing. There was even redlining, where black neighborhoods are lined red on a map and marked
